FORMER TOUR DE France winner Alberto Contador is among those who will testify to a Spanish court which opens hearings today on “Operation Puerto”, seven years after the doping scandal erupted in 2006.
Five people will have to answer charges of an “offence against public health”, including the suspected mastermind of the network, 57-year-old doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.
A sophisticated doping network was blown wide open on 23 May 2006 when Spanish police raided several apartments and a laboratory in Madrid and seized around 200 bags of blood.
A number of top cyclists, including Spaniards Alejandro Valverde and Contador, and Italian Ivan Basso, were implicated. On the same day, police arrested doctors, sporting directors and trainers suspected of taking part in the doping scheme.
Initial reports, as well as Fuentes, said other athletes — primarily tennis players and footballers — had been involved. Those statements were later retracted.
The five defendants are charged with endangering public health rather than incitement to doping, which was not a crime at the time of the arrests. A Spanish anti-doping law was passed only in November 2006. The distinction between the two charges is likely to be pivotal. The prosecutor, who is seeking a two-year prison sentence plus a two-year professional ban for the accused, will have to show the performance-enhancing blood transfusions put the riders’ health at risk.
Fuentes, who has always described himself as a doctor who simply wanted to help athletes, flatly denies this.
In his written defence, a copy of which was published by leading daily El Pais, the Canary Islands doctor said the blood and plasma were stored in “ideal conditions”.
“None of the athletes in this case have been been harmed,” he said.
Contador, who is due to appear on 5 February, was initially linked to Operation Puerto but was later cleared of any involvement by a Spanish judge and the International Cycling Union (UCI).
The investigators’ final report contained a list of 58 clients, all cyclists. Of them, only six have suffered sporting sanctions: Valverde, Germans Jan Ullrich and Joerg Jaksche and Italians Basso, Michele Scarponi and Giampaolo Caruso, who was later acquitted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The investigating judge, Antonio Serrano, closed the case twice, in 2007 and 2008, on the grounds that the doping-related allegations were not illegal at the time and that the small amounts found of blood booster EPO (erythropoietin) did not constitute a health risk. The Madrid Provincial Courts obliged him to re-open the case.
Spain now is preparing a new anti-doping law aiming to harmonise its legislation with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s anti-doping code.
